Instead of sitting at the office all day, you would like to do something else. Right?

"The 4-Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferriss provides insights on how to design the lifestyle you want. The book's framework gives you a detailed plan for achieving your dream lifestyle. Whether it's traveling the world, learning something new, or spending more time with your family.

It does so with a few simple steps:

• Identify what you need to achieve your lifestyle.
• Come up with an idea to create that lifestyle.
• Make sure you free up enough time to support that lifestyle.

I want to save you some time by summarizing the 3 main steps from the book to get a first glance at building your dream lifestyle.

Create a lifestyle that provides you with freedom rather than money.

Freedom is more important than money.

It is important not to focus solely on money. If this is your goal, you will probably work 60 or 80 hours a week and not have any time to enjoy your money. Instead, focus on freedom and having the time to live the life you want. Money should enable your lifestyle, not dictate it.

So instead of making the most money, focus on making enough money for your lifestyle with as little involvement as possible.

Find a business to support your lifestyle by quickly iterating and growing proven ideas.

To live your dream lifestyle, you will still need money to support it.

But rather than having a classic 9-to-5, which directly trades your time for money, try to decouple them. One of the best ways to do so is to create an online business that will make you money when you're away. Try to explore as many ideas as possible, build a minimal viable product and see how the ideas are received. If it works, expand it; if not, throw it away and focus on the next idea.

You don't need huge business ideas; you can use multiple, smaller ideas to achieve your income goal.

You can grow your business without taking on more work by automating and outsourcing as much as possible.

When you have an idea that works, you must start growing it.

Do so by automating and outsourcing as much as possible, as you want to limit your involvement. To identify suitable tasks, you should keep a log of your tasks and how long they take you. The log will then be the basis as it allows you to identify repetitive tasks that take most of your time, the prime targets for either automation or outsourcing.

Remember, at the end of the day, it's your goal to create a machine that only needs minimal input from you to keep running.

I can't recommend the book enough! If you liked the ideas presented here, feel free to read the whole book and tell me what you thought about it.